HORSLEY : NOTES ON TAPES. 175 



opened and cleaned; (2) that if you boiled the shells to kill the animal, 

 while, of course, the markings remained, the differences of colour 

 largely disappeared. In fact much the same result of a rusty colour 

 followed as when a lobster is boiled. Is this commonly observed 

 amongst marine shells ? I have not found it to happen with terrestrial 

 species. And if so, what is its cause ? I may mention that no salt 

 was put into the water. Tapes decussatii<: via'\>i% but little in colour; 

 T. au7'eiis very much. One definitely named variety in each is that in 

 which there is an angular pattern over all the shell. This is var. 

 texturah/s. T. aureus varies greatly. It was an amusement to the old 

 women in the market to see me turning over their mounds of this 

 species in seach of well-marked specimens or variations. They are 

 estuarine, or found only in brackish water (though the water of the 

 Etang is so saline that salt-making flourishes here) and they are pro- 

 cured by means of a long pole with a heavy iron rake (teeth about the 

 size of those of a reaping machine) with a bag net beneath. With this 

 they scratch the bottom of the canal or the lagoon (some of them just 

 under my bed-room window) and then with much labour hauling the 

 bag to the side of the boat they wash away the mud, and discarding 

 stones, refuse, and other kinds of shells, they are rewarded by two or 

 three for each laborious scooping. It is hard labour and only a few 

 pints seem to be a day's result. Considering the popularity of this 

 kind of food in all the country round about, one wonders why typhoid 

 does not abound. Into this canal, beneath my windows, through 

 which sea water flows with some rapidity, run drains from every 

 house, and women come across the road to empty their slops. I 

 questioned a merchant on this point, and he admitted that when 

 strangers came and ate "des coquillages" they were liable to typhoid; 

 but that it did not seem to affect the natives. He himself, however, 

 — perhaps from having spent some time in prejudiced England — 

 avoided these molluscs. The mussels also for food are largely scraped 

 from the walls of the canals, which make a Venice of this town. 



A Plover with Anodonta cygnea attached to its Foot. — Seeing in the 

 "Surrey Mirror," October 2l.st, 1904, that a peewit had been found on Gatton Park 

 estate with a fieshwater mussel attached to its foot, I went the following day to 

 investigate the matter. The keeper shewed me the bird and the mussel, which 

 latter proved to be a three-parts grown A. cygnea, measuring 4^ by 2.\ inches, which 

 I have pleasure in now exhibiting. The lake on the estate swarms with this species, 

 the Zellensis form predominating, and a large part of the shallow end of the lake 

 being dry from want of rain, flocks of plovers come to feed on the exposed shore. 

 The bird in question had plunged its whole foot above the ankle into the upright 

 posterior end of the shell, which had closed upon it. The bird was found about 

 sixty yards away, a helpless prisoner. — LIONEL E. Adams {Read before the Society, 

 November 9th, 1904), 



